William Hasker

  This essay presents William Wainwright’s conception of religious reasoning. He rejects the view that proper reasoning in religion must be limited to “neutral technical reason” (NTR), modes of reasoning that are neutral and acceptable to all parties in a religious disagreement. He emphasizes that religious reasoning, as seen in outstanding practitioners from different religious traditions, incorporates additional elements, such as appeals to revelation, emphasis on religious reading, rhetoric, acknowledgment of mystery, and especially “passional reason,” in which the arguments presented and the conclusions accepted depend essentially on the state of the reasoner’s heart. The essay goes on to consider how Wainwright deals with issues surrounding religious diversity: he rejects all of the standard methods by which it has been argued that differences in belief between traditions either do not really exist or do not ultimately matter. Special attention is given to religious pluralism, as advocated by John Hick and Peter Byrne. This leads to a consideration of exclusivism, in which it is held that the fundamental doctrines of one religion are true, and those of other religions, insofar as they differ from those of the favored religion, are false. Wainwright finds the standard objections against exclusivism to be ineffective or inconclusive. Finally, the essay addresses a question suggested but not resolved by Wainwright’s work: Does religious diversity have the consequence that truth in religion is not accessible to us?

An argument is presented, based on a common-sense interpretation of an everyday experience, for emergent dualism as the best available account of the origin of the human mind/soul. Emergent dualism is superior to subjective idealism in that it honors the common-sense conviction that the things we encounter have a real, physical existence, separate from our mental perceptions of them. It is superior to materialism in that it allows for our mental states to have real, physical effects, distinct from the effects of the physical states that accompany the mental states. It is also superior to materialism in allowing for a real, unified self that is not merely a collection of physical particles. These features allow emergent dualism to provide a foundation for libertarian free will; belief in such free will is another deliverance of common sense that cannot readily be reconciled with materialism. Emergent dualism is superior to standard varieties of dualism in giving a plausible account of the minds of non-human animals. Perhaps surprisingly, emer gent dualism is superior both to traditional dualism and to standard varieties of materialism in combining readily with theories of biological evolution, in which natural selection promotes both the physical and mental development of complex organisms.